An Even More Sinister Analgesic

Zadie Smith White Teeth (London: Hamish Hamilton,  2000), p. 167.

If religion is the opium of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.

The Doctor's Art

non est in medico semper relevetur ut aeger:
   interdum docta plus valet arte malum.

A doctor cannot always cure the ill:
   sickness, at times, is beyond all proven skill.

Ovid, Ex Ponto, I.iii.17-18. My translation.

Japanese Giant Gecko

Japanese Giant Gecko (Gekko japonicus, 多疣壁虎).

Although they are rare to see during the day on Yuelu Mountain, they are very active at night. In any of the open buildings scattered around the mountain, they can reliably be found after sunset, lying in wait for insects on the roofs and walls.

Courage and Artlessness

Claire Harman, Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography (London: Penguin Books, 2015; 1989), p. 185:

The naval war of the winter of 1939 may not have seemed too threatening to the population of West Dorset, but the events of early 1940 did. Hitler overran Denmark and Norway in April with alarming ease, and the Royal Navy had difficulty holding the position won at Narvik. By the summer, the governments of Poland and Belgium, the King and Queen of Norway and the Queen of the Netherlands were all in exile in London; the British Expeditionary Force, once so sure of hanging out its washing on the Siegfried Line, had been caught in a pincer movement, and was trapped at Dunkirk. France was within weeks of capitulation to Germany. Early measures taken at home to provide some protection for civilians now lost their air of pointless routine and were undertaken in earnest, and in the wake of earnestness came a deal of inefficiency. Sylvia wrote wearily of an ARP air-raid rehearsal in Maiden Newton: ‘It is like a knock-about farce film done in slow motion, and at intervals some member of the local gentry pipes up to say, “Well, let’s hope it will never be needed”, or “We can’t really get on with it without Mr Thompson”, or “Has it started yet, do you know?” The most melancholy thought is, that if there is a real raid they will all dauntlessly turn up to mismanage it, for their courage is as unquestionable as their artlessness.’

Gray-capped Pygmy Woodpecker

Gray-capped Pygmy Woodpecker (Yungipicus canicapillus, 星头啄木鸟).

A small woodpecker, spotted in Xuanwu Lake Park in Nanjing during a morning walk (I was there for a conference).

Greek Poetry and Geography

Robin Lane Fox, Homer and His Iliad (London: Penguin Books, 2023), p. 54:

Throughout antiquity, Greek poetry and cult show a strong connection to particular sites and landscapes in the real world. The Iliad already exemplifies it. Homer had visited windy Troy on a clear day when distant Samothrace was visible. He had identified vantage points for the gods and visited them too on either side of the bay on whose shore he placed the Greek ships. I like to think he had walked south, like Chryses, beside the shore of the booming sea and come to the promontory called Chryse and to the sanctuary a little way inland where, for him, Chryses was the priest of Apollo. From there, I take him in my mind’s eye on an uphill walk for several hours on a crisp day in early spring, up through the crocuses which were carpeting the slopes with gold below Gargaron and on to the foot of its grey peak, where he stopped, checked the view back to Troy and made an offering to Zeus.

Chinese Thistle

Chinese Thistle (Cirsium chinense, 崂山蓟).

Found growing by a trail in Shibadong. The deeply lobed leaves are strikingly different than the thistles one more often comes across.

Gentlemen

Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (Boston: Back Bay Books 1999; 1928), p. 54.

For generations the British bourgeoisie have spoken of themselves as gentlemen, and by that they have meant, among other things, a self-respecting scorn of irregular perquisites. It is the quality that distinguishes the gentleman from both the artist and the aristocrat.

Swan Goose

Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides, 鸿雁).

A migratory goose that winters in southern China, though truly wild ones are rare. More common are domesticated geese and there feral (having escaped from farms) cousins.

Civilization is Communication

 Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end. Click…OFF.

Haruku Murakami, Wind/Pinball: two novels, trans. by Ted Goossen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015; 1979-1980), p. 19.

Molipteryx Lunata

Molipteryx lunata (月肩莫缘蝽).

A squash bug with a crescent-moon shape, they are found throughout southern China. This one was on the exterior wall of a building in Shibadong.

Chinese Books

Duarte de Sande, Diálogo sobre a missão dos embaixadores japoneses à Cúria Romana, ed. by Américo da Costa Ramalho & Sebastião Tavares de Pinho, 2 vols (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2009; 1590) , II, pp. 719-21:

Veniamus nunc ad eam artem quam Sinae summopere profitentur, eamque merito litteraturam possumus appellare. Quamuis enim uulgata fama sit, a Sinis multas ingenuas artes coli, praesertimque utramque philosophiam, quae de rerum natura et moribus agit, et apud eos esse Academias, ubi huiusmodi artes traduntur haec tamen opinio magna ex parte popularis potius, quam uera censenda est.
   Dicam tamen quid huic opinioni occasionem dederit. In primis ergo Sinae litterariam artem praecipue profitentur, eamque diligentissime ediscunt, longum tempus totamque fere aetatem ea in re consumentes. Eam ob causam in omnibus urbibus et oppidis, immo et in exiguis pagis sunt magistri, mercede conducti, qui pueros litteras docent. Cumque illae iuxta nostrum etiam communiorem morem sint infinitae, ab ineunte aetate, tenerisque unguiculis pueri libros in manus sumunt, quos tantum illi deponunt qui parum habiles ad hoc munus iudicantur, et ad mercaturam, uel artes quae manibus exercentur, animum applicant. Reliqui uero tanto studio ad litteras incumbunt, ut mirabiliter in praecipuis libris sint uersati, et in quauis pagina quot sint litterae, et in quo situ rogati, facile respondeant.

Let us now to that art in which the Chinese cultivate the most, and which we may rightly call literature. For although it is popularly known that the Chinese cultivate many ingenuous arts, and especially the two branches of philosophy, which deal with the nature of things and manners, and that there are academies among them, where such arts are taught, yet this opinion is by and large more commonplace than it is true.
   However, I will comment on, what gave rise to this opinion. Firstly, therefore, the Chinese especially profess the art of letters and learn it with the greatest diligence, spending a long time and almost and almost their entire lives in study. For this reason, in all cities and towns, even in small villages, there are hired teachers who teach characters to children. And since their characters are infinite compared to our alphabet, from the earliest age children carry books in their hands, and only those who are considered inept put them down and apply their minds to trade or the manual arts. As for the rest, they devote themselves so ardently to letters that they become marvellously versed in the canonical books, and when asked how many letters there are and where on each page, they easily answer.

My translation.

Oedaleus Manjius

Oedaleus manjius (红胫小车蝗).

Spotted by the forest in Shibadong: the first time and only time I have encountered this bandwing grasshopper.

Sparrow False Pimpernel

Sparrow False Pimpernel (Bonnaya antipoda, 泥花草).

A perennial plant distributed from subtropical Asia to Australia, where it blooms in April. Here in the Xiang mudflats, is a November Autumn flower.